Between 1975 and '85 Tom Cooper ran the venerable mid-city Vagabond Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, presenting in repertory a treasure trove of movies from Hollywood's Golden Era. After a six-year absence he is back at the Vagabond, which he reopens today with a timely retrospective in honor of Frank Capra, who died Sept. 3. The 18-film series commences with "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Arsenic and Old Lace."

Tom Lewis was waiting. He had been expecting this. He loped across the coaches' office at St. John Bosco High School and switched off the television. "Oprah" would have to wait, it was time to talk--again. "I knew this was coming. It was just a matter of when," Lewis said. The inevitable was Lewis coaching basketball, not playing it. He is an assistant coach for the Braves, another interesting twist in an already interesting story.

August 7, 1994 | Wayne Koestenbaum, Wayne Koestenbaum is the author of "The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire," and two collections of poetry, including the recently published "Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender."

What would homosexuality be, without its penumbra of covert locations? The genius of George Chauncey's "Gay New York" is its respect for vanished bathhouses, tearooms and saloons where gays cruised and commingled; its respect for homosexualities of the street corner, pier and park--all those lost, aromatic rendezvous.

July 23, 1995 | Lynell George, Lynell George is a Times staff writer and author of "No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angeles."

Dany Laferriere is not a black writer. And, though its cover promises so, nor is his svelte, matte-black volume, "Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex?" a novel. "As I write these words," Laferriere confides, tone confessional, "I think of Rene Magritte painting a pipe and adding the caption. 'This is not a pipe.' " Traveling this territory, remember, the objects in the mirror are much closer than they appear. Shuck away expectations.

Boo!, as he calls himself, doesn't have shoes. "You get used to it," says the 27-year-old veteran traveler as he stands on the edge of the central plaza of Arcata. He also has no job. "I don't answer to a clock. I go where I want to go." He does, however, have a filthy, graffiti-stained station wagon--which at the moment is filled with fellow travelers and a steaming vat of oatmeal that Boo! commandeered from sympathetic donors. His hungry friends eat from tin bowls.

Nicole Baker remembers one of the nights that Gary Gilmore stole into her dreams. She called him a fool, this murderous lover she once tried to join in death, and he vanished without a word. In the 10 years since Gilmore was executed, the woman he loved has found God. She has not found peace. "The things I went through are still in me," Baker said. "I still feel them sometimes, like on a cold winter morning, I look out the window and I get that same lonely feeling I felt when I . . .

Readers over 30 may not recognize manga artist Takehiko Inoue's name, but teens and twentysomethings in America, Japan, France, Brazil and 19 other countries follow the misadventures of basketball star wanna-be Hanamichi Sakuragi in "Slam Dunk," samurai Miyamoto Musashi's progress on the musha shugyo ("warrior's path") in "Vagabond" and the struggles of wheelchair basketball ace Kiyoharu Togawa in "Real." Inoue has sold more than 157 million books worldwide. Born in 1967 in Kagoshima prefecture, Inoue attended Kumamoto University but dropped out to concentrate on manga.

Question: What was probably the only movie Clark Gable ever made for Warner Bros.? Answer: "Night Nurse," a mystery filmed in 1931. (No, he didn't play the title role--that was Barbara Stanwyck.) It's part of the Vagabond Theatre's series of Warners classics running Oct. 20-Nov.

Bill Musselman, a coaching vagabond with stops in the NBA, ABA, CBA and Big Ten, was named coach at South Alabama, 9-18 this season. Musselman, 54, was out of coaching this season. * Jerry Tarkanian said he'd be interested in coaching at Fresno State after Gary Colson resigned Wednesday. "Fresno certainly has a warm spot in my heart," Tarkanian told the Fresno Bee. Tarkanian grew up in Fresno and is a 1955 graduate of Fresno State.